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Here we are at the 19th episode of the fourth season of Riverdale. Under normal circumstances, a full season consists of 22 episodes but Riverdale was one of the first networks shows forced to shut down after a crew member came into contact with someone infected with the coronavirus. As more and more productions were forced to shut down, that left us three episodes short of a true season finale. But somehow they managed to leave us with a pretty solid cliffhanger that would have been right at home on a traditional season finale.
This season of Riverdale has been pretty solid. It felt a little frustrating at times with the teases about the mysterious VHS tapes, and the long stretches when it seemed everyone forgot about them, but in the grand scheme of things it actually worked well, allowing the creatives to carry two plotlines throughout the season without a switch from one to the other becoming jarring. The bulk of the season, of course, led up to the ‘murder’ of Jughead — which ended with a series of pretty solid episodes — then we got a respite with the musical episode and now we’re just getting back into the thick of things with the VHS tapes mystery.
And this story has taken a surprisingly dark turn from hours of footage of neighborhood homes to shocking reenactments of this ‘wicked little town’s’ most notorious events, including the ‘murder’ of Jughead and the actual murder of Jason Blossom. The question is — who is responsible for these tapes? I’ve already pinned two possible suspects (technically three) and I’m confident that one of them has been eliminated this week.
The tale of the tapes seemed to start with Mr. Honey’s arrival in Riverdale. He’s been nothing but a thorn in the side of the Archie gang all year and all of that came to head this week. Almost all of the principles of the group have been banned from senior prom because of their various antics throughout the school year … except Archie and Jughead, and Archie isn’t even going to be able to walk with his friends during graduation. He pushed things even further with Betty by telling her that after all of her hard work, there will be no yearbook because she was two days late turning it in for review. But … she cleared it with the printer and they are good to go. Except, Principal Honey is a real prick and he says he won’t have time to review it before publication.
That pushed all the buttons, leading to the group to muse about how they could get back at Mr. Honey with a little kidnapping scheme, dressed as students from Stonewall Academy. Jughead, learning he was on the verge of being accepted to the University of Iowa for his writing, needs to provide one more sample of his work, so he creates an entire scenario in which the group kidnaps Honey. In the meantime, knowing they can’t really kidnap the principal, Reggie comes up with the next best idea — super-gluing Honey to his office chair and telephone (with the help of Archie and Kevin). That little stunt got the entire senior prom cancelled and fuelled Jughead’s dark fantasy of killing Honey (accidentally) and burying the body, which gave us one of the episode’s funniest moments when it was asked of the group if anyone had experience getting rid of a dead body. Everyone but Reggie raised their hands.
As Jughead’s story progressed — with the episode flashing between the fantasy and reality, and expertly directed by Madchen Amick — the group took it upon themselves to play the victim and got their parents to confront Honey about reinstating the prom. He refused at first but after a closed door meeting with the adults in the room, the prom was back on. Until … a new VHS arrived at the school with hours of the outside and inside of the building, with the mystery cameraman covering every hallway and room in the building. Perceiving this as a threat, Honey cancelled the prom yet again.
But Juggie and Betty felt something was off. Why would the person making the tapes suddenly revert back to filming hours of nothing after moving forward and staging gruesome snuff videos? Betty volunteered to scan through the video to look for clues and she found one — the reflection of Mr. Honey in a window, enough evidence to prove he was the person behind this video but not the others. No one in the public knows about the newer, grisley videos so Honey was just working from what he knew. And that ended up costing him his job, making the Archie gang feel rather smug with themselves as their prom is also back on. But Honey knew he was on his way out and actually ended up becoming the new headmaster at … Stonewall Academy. At three times the salary. But Honey’s shoddy attempt at making a copycat video puts him completely out of the running as the culprit of the other videos. Even if he did have access to all of the AV Club equipment.
The kids also got an earfull from the principal’s secretary, who’s been at Riverdale High for fifty years. She makes sure they know that what they did was terrible because Mr. Honey has been the best principal she’s ever worked for. He got full college scholarships for several under-privileged students and the school’s average GPA has been higher than it’s been since 1959. And he had written a letter to the University of Iowa in regards to Jughead that she refused to mail now and told Jughead he could do it himself. Upon reading the contents of the letter, Jughead rushed to rewrite his story, having Archie and Veronica save Mr. Honey’s life because … his letter to the university was fully in support of Jughead’s acceptance to the school because Honey knew that he is a good writer.
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And to make matters worse, a new video tape was delivered to the Cooper-Jones house. On it, Betty and Jughead saw the exterior of a cabin, the one where Hermione Lodge murdered Sheriff Minetta. Inside they found a white sheet on the wall and an old movie projector, but that wasn’t for them. Betty spied an old TV and VCR, and firing everything up the pair saw one of the most shocking videos yet — an entire group of people wearing cartoonish masks of Archie, Jughead, Betty, Veronica, Reggie and Cheryl (for some reason, Toni was missing from the entire episode this week), and tied to a chair was someone wearing a Mr. Honey mask. The group circled ‘Honey’ and began stabbing him repeatedly and when they were all done, they revealed the dead body as the turned to the camera and cocked their heads. And that is a solid cliffhanger. I’m guessing the intention was to end this storyline with the true season finale and set up next season’s mystery like they did with Jughead’s death last season, but this will certainly keep us guessing as to who is responsible for these videos.
With Honey out of the picture, the next logical suspect is actually Charles (and Chic) because he certainly would have access to the equipment needed to produce these videos. But with the murders now being depicted, how would he be involved and who are the other people doing the killing? That puts another potential suspect at the forefront: Evelyn Evernever. Yes, she’s in prison but that doesn’t mean The Farm has been completely disbanded and deprogrammed. She knows about the plot to kill Jughead from Betty paying her a visit. She was aware of Jason Blossom’s murder from Cheryl’s time at The Farm. But how would she know about Jughead’s ‘Killing Mr. Honey’ story? Aside from Cheryl, there is the question of whether Kevin has been totally deprogrammed but he didn’t know the details of Jughead’s story. BUT he’s also not among the masked characters killing ‘Mr. Honey’ in the video. The only person aside from Jughead who has that intimate information about the story is … Betty. We know she had been ‘activated’ by a code word planted in her subconscious, but did she truly, successfully break that hold the word had over her? Or was there really a second code word that Donna Sweett knew from her visit to Evelyn, and that Evelyn threatened to tell Betty? Did she? Has Betty been unconsciously following in her father’s footsteps? I can’t really think of anyone else who may be responsible and who also knows about Jughead’s story, so that is a lot to think about until the show returns.
For now, it was a really decent conclusion to a season that was much better than the two that had come before it. Hopefully they will be able to get back into production in time to bring us new episodes in the Fall.
What did you think of this episode? Let us know what you think in the comments section below.
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